Jon Snow examines the brutal reality of life inside post-invasion Iraq,
meeting a variety of its citizens from victims of bomb blasts and war
widows to human rights activists and politicians.

Five years after the invasion, Channel 4 news anchor Jon Snow examines
the brutal reality of life inside post-invasion Iraq, meeting a variety of its
citizens from victims of bomb blasts and war widows to human rights
activists and politicians. While the coalition forces herald its burgeoning
democracy, Snow ties together reports and unseen footage of recent
violence and human rights abuses from beyond the Green Zone which
paint a picture of a fragmented state on the brink of anarchy and collapse.

Deploying regional video journalists and specialist cameramen into areas
few Western journalists could ever contemplate, Jon Snow's Hidden Iraq
ventures behind the rhetoric to uncover what life on the ground is really
like for Iraqis. The film forms part of the Happy Birthday Iraq season
marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion - a series of penetrating
programmes made by award-winning filmmakers examining the
devastating fall-out of the war for Iraq and the Middle East, America and
Britain.

Journalist Nir Rosen travels around Baghdad and uncovers a patchwork
of ethnically-segregated communities, divided by concrete blast walls.
Where once different religions and sects mixed freely, he discovers a
complete disconnection with homogenous neighbourhoods at war with
one another.

Rosen's footage reveals how the splintering of Iraq has allowed warlords
and militias to control individual areas. He meets Abu Abed, the
commander of one such militia protecting the Sunni Ameriya district of
Baghdad. The Americans have celebrated the exploits of his "Awakening
Council" which united them in the fight against Al Qaeda, as emblematic
of the success of the surge. But his views on the Shia offer a chilling
prospect for the future of Iraq: "Because Iraq is a tribal country the killing
is not forgotten even after years. You kill my brother and I know you
killed him then I will follow you for a hundred years. You cannot forget.
Revenge in the Arab tradition is a very old habit."

The view from an opposing Shia militia is no more encouraging. Abu
Hassan, a committed Sadrist, the party protected by the powerful Shia
Mahdi army labels the Awakening Council a "bunch of killers", arguing
they kill for money and their loyalty is dependent on America's funding.

The film reveals how our obsession with the security situation in Iraq
masks the true hardships of daily life. Saad Jawaad, victim of a recent
bomb in the Karrada district of Baghdad, tells Snow that state healthcare
has all but collapsed. He describes being turned away from his hospital
which now only treats wealthy private patients.

Iraq was once home to the largest secular middle class in the Middle East.
Human rights activist Basma Al Khatib describes its disintegration to Snow
- the collapse of industry, the closure of universities and the control of
business centres by militias. Basma reveals just how far the standard of
living has regressed: "In the eighties we discarded oil fuel heaters, but
now it's life-saving because you can survive with them... You dig your
well in case there is no water. You have your own generators; you have
your own stock of fuel. You have to have a stock of food for three
months, especially if you have kids... We don't have hot water... You do
worry about your wife giving birth after 11 O'clock in labour, because you
cannot take her to hospital, so most of the pregnant women now schedule
a caesarean."

The film examines the appalling, but forgotten plight of Iraq's millions of
widows. Najah Abbas speaks for the thousands of women whose
husbands have been killed, telling Snow how impossible her life has
become following the death of her husband - how she feels abandoned
by the Government and has no-one to turn to.

Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad tells Jon that the newly-created central
government in the Greenzone is in reality a paper fiction, bearing no
relation to the lives of ordinary Iraqis: "The parliament in Baghdad, for
the average Iraqi person is a distant planet, somewhere else. People talk
in the Parliament about issues that don't really touch the life of the Iraqi
people... When we talk about an Iraqi Government, again, it's a... it's a
kind of a mistake, it's a kind of a wrong word."

Jon contends that our expectations for Iraq have sunk so low that
"success" is measured purely by casualties. "In attempting to quantify
what's happened here in the last five years there's been a grim obsession
with body counts - how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died,
but the abiding casualty is the quality of life of the average Iraqi... This is
a society that has seen its middle classes flee, has witnessed the
execution of Saddam, but itself has been beheaded."

I highly recommend this video. I caught it first time round on TV and is a piece of decent journalism. John Snow tells it like it is and you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the reasons for invading Iraq and all the promises that were made were completely bogus.
________
herbal vaporizer

Last edited by ploder on Wed Feb 02, 2011 10:19 pm; edited 1 time in total

Great post. Thanks. I can't help but think that if the hidden architects of the occupation could speak freely, their message would be the same as it was in 2003, - "Mission Accomplished". There were two telling quotes from the video that spoke to this:

"Increasingly, we're being destroyed."

"The American forces have created disabled men, destruction, displacement and an unstable country."_________________"There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen." - Sean O'Faolain

Maudlin, selective editing with opinion as narration from the other cheek on the corporate ass (you know, the cheek that funds folks like Snow to stroll along Baghdad streets or sit in hotel rooms for 5 minute interviews).

And the "left" sheeple will cry, just as the "right" over their films of schools and hospitals built in Ramadi or troops dancing with children - "how can it not be the truth, I seen it with my own eyes on the tube."

Despite the merits of Jon Snow's coverage of Iraq, Kathy and I have
viewed the movie 'Battle for Haditha,' which was transmitted on
Channel 4 concurrent with Snow's Iraq features. The docu-drama film is
supposed to be the story of the Haditha massacre. We found it to be a
piece of crude propaganda.

The film mixes truths which are already inescapably in the public domain,
with gross distortions of the overall context of the murder of 24 civilians,
including women and children as young as 2-years-old.

It blames the 'terrorist' IED bombing which preceeded the killings of the
civillians as the real cause of the massacre. It shows "Al-Qaida" paying
$1,000 to those who planted the IED -implying that money is their main
motivation. In truth, the "al-Qaida" foreign fighters are despised by many
Iraqis because of suicide bombings which target civillians. It is the Iraqi
resistance who have spearheaded the IED campaign.

The film implies that ordinary Iraqis are unsupportive of the resistance,
even though polls have shown that up to 70% approve of guerilla acts
which target the occupation and not civilians.

In a closing scene, four Marines are shown being informed that they
are to be investigated for murder of the civillians --giving the impression
that a proper military-judicial process is now in train. In fact, charges
against three of the four have been dropped and those against the fourth
Marine have been reduced to manslaughter. There is no mention of this.

The whole affsir is portrayed as a tragic isolated incident. Truth is that
the U.S. occupation forces are notorious among Iraqis for their unprovoked
and/or reckless shootings of civilians. This context is never referenced.

The film even puts words in the mouths of the actors along the lines that
things in Iraq would be much worse if the U.S were to withdraw.

It's a despicable exploitation of the deaths for political purposes._________________Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.

Channel4 is showing a side of the Iraq conflict that rarely features on TV.

I would say that the Channel4 "side" is the "left/progressive/liberal" side of propaganda. I'm not sure what to call the "opposition" anymore.

I haven't seen truth from any "side" in my lifetime. Largely hype and spin with a dash of fact. Personally, I believe all we are fed is 95 percent spin and 5 percent fact, and folks keep tuning in for the media ejaculation - rage, anger, warm fuzzies, justification, next truthsayer step right up.

As for who controls the oil in Iraq my opinion is one need look no further than unapproachable secluded estates in places such as the Netherlands, Belgium....

(A little background on myself - (I'm a bit paranoid) but I have 3 sons age 23-37, a DIL, and several nephews doing multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and a veteran of Central American myself in the 1980s. Our family has always been military, and although I tried years ago to keep my children out of uniform they too have made careers there. Contrary to popular belief our family is neither poor nor ignorant, or redneck. My children are biracial, hubby is Sicilian/I'm black, all my daughter-in-laws are Mexican nationals. I fantasize of freedom w/o or from government.)